A Teacher’s Guide for the Reconstruction Era

"The Emancipation of the Negroes, January, 1863—The Past and the Future"

Harper's Weekly, Jan. 24, 1863. The Smithsonian.

"The lawon the side of freedom is of great advantage
only when there is power to make that law respected.”

– Frederick Douglass

The surrender by Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox marked the end of one period of violence and regional difference in the United States and the beginning of another. Reconstruction (1865-1877) is the period of time following the American Civil War (1861-1865) when some politicians and citizens sought to reunify the nation, integrate freed slaves into society and the economy, establish political and economic rights for all African Americans, and determine what role the U.S. government would play in implementing these policies while preventing another civil war from breaking out. On the contrary, some politicians and citizens resented the prospect of there once again being a single nation, rejected equal protection under the law and birthright citizenship in the United States, no matter a person's race, and refused to accept the termination of slavery as an institution and practice. Historian and scholar W. E. B. DuBois wrote of this complex time that "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery."

This Teacher’s Guide provides compelling questions to frame a unit of study and inquiry projects, along with activity ideas that include use of newspapers from the era and resources for social studies, ELA, and music education. Our NEH sponsored multimedia resources provide a look into the history, as well as contemporary connections for students to engage in a change over time analysis. Teachers can also access a seminar and DBQ activity for students in grades 8-12 that brings together primary source documents and supports student inquiry.

I. Compelling Questions

To what extent did Reconstruction forge a “more perfect union”?

Did Reconstruction extend or undermine democracy in the United States?

Why did Black Codes and Jim Crow exist?

How did local and regional differences affect the ways in which Reconstruction was implemented?

What did the Reconstruction era mean from economic and labor rights?

To what extent did Reconstruction resolve disagreements over political rights and representation?

Was Reconstruction a second American Revolution?

What did the Reconstruction Amendments mean for citizenship in the United States?

What is the lasting legacy of Reconstruction era policies and practices?

Radio Diaries: Civil War Widows. This podcast tells the story of Daisy Anderson and Alberta Martin, two women who, when they were in their early twenties, married men who were near 80 and, as it happens, served onopposite sides of the Civil War.

IV. Opposing Viewpoints in Historical Newspapers

“The beauty of the prospect, is not what entices them to rush on, to what we believe will be our certain destruction: and this is sufficiently evident, not only from the unanimity with which they agreed, to the beginning, that a separation once effected, should be final and eternal--not only from the very dark picture, which even the most superficial view of the consequences of reconstruction, presents--but alas from their own statement that they prefer reconstruction by consent, as the alternative to subjugation, which to them seems, to be inevitable."

“The arrest of Maj. McCardle, the distinguished and chivalric editor of the Times took place yesterday. On inquiry we learned that he had been arrested for obstructing reconstruction and advising resistance to the acts of Congress. This is a poor pretense.”